Getting Around : Walls, Stairs, Fences and Tunnels

 The Past Remembered Anew:

How Childhood Moments Reveal   

Who We Are Now

Bill

As a kid in Jamaica Plain, I was happiest when I was somewhere in my neighborhood, on the streets, in friends' yards, sometimes up top on a wall, wondering what was inside the spooky darkness of a tunnel or even just walking up and down stairs. These were great ways to get a different perspective or served as passages to places that might be fun or interesting.  

Our house on Adams Circle (Now known as Mendell Way.) had a small backyard which doubled as our victory garden during the war. We have a family photo of my older brother making mud pies on the concrete pathway which led to a cellar entrance. A chain link fence separated the yard from my school, the Ellis Mendell.  For most kids having their school literally in the back yard might be considered a bit of a nightmare.  For me, the school, with its schoolyard and grassy areas, was the jumping off spot for a day of being on my own or with my friends.

At a right angle to the fence was a brick wall that ran from a corner of our yard down to Boylston Place where there was a set of stairs that led to the schoolyard.  I was about six when I first used the chain link fence to climb up to the top of the wall.  It was a quicker way to get to the schoolyard rather than walking "all the way" over to School Street to the schoolyard's front entrance. Getting to the top of the wall took some scrambling but even as a skinny six year-old, I didn't lack those physical attributes all active kids have: agility, balance and stamina.

Once on the wall I'd walk on top from my backyard down to where the wall ended, a brick post topped with a small concrete ball which was one side of the back gate to the school yard.

I may have a bit of acrophobia now but as a kid I couldn't get up on that wall fast enough.  Walking along it wasn't enough.  Sometimes I'd run. I never fell off.  The drop onto the school side with its grassy area was probably six or seven feet, but a more substantial fall awaited on the other side, a mostly grassy terrain with weeds, some small trees, that slopped downward.  There were grape vines down there too, tangled together on a weathered arbor. There was also a garage, the roof of which was just below the level of the wall. 

I liked it up there on the wall.  While it did afford that short cut to the schoolyard, that wasn't the prime reason I used it as my walkway.  In spite of the steep drops I felt safe up there.  I liked having that different perspective, of being up high, of seeing more than I could from the ground. If some crazy dog came along they could bark and snap all they wanted; they'd be down there, I'd be up on the wall, secure, and superior.

The top of the wall was narrow but for a six year-old the footing was just about right. Did I climb it in the rain? Did I avoid it in the winter? Most likely this was a summer thing. I liked the differences on each side of the wall.  The neatly trimmed grass on the school side.  The school itself with all those windows.  The "wild side" was more interesting. The weeds, the bushes, those grape vines. There was even a path down there very close to the wall.  Sometimes I'd take that to get to my back yard from the school yard, a "walk on the wild side." 

Occasionally, one of my friends, Johnny or Roger, would be up there with me. Sometimes we would walk back and forth from the gate end to my backyard terminus, over and over. When I first introduced some of my friends to the wall, they would "walk" it by bending over, their hands and feet both on the wall, sort of skittering along it, nervous a full standup walk might lead to their falling off.  The wall took some getting used to.  As a kid a drop to either side was a long way to fall.

There were times when the wall became more than a wall.  Down below there might have been lunging crocodiles we had to fight off. Maybe the wall would be the ramparts of a castle we had to defend. There were sword fights up on the wall, scraggly sticks substituting for the swords. A much messier fight would be with milk weed stalks, our clothes spotted with the foamy white fluid.  Johnny would sometimes hurl himself off the wall onto the grass by the school. He'd scream like he had been shot or stabbed, fly off the wall, do a little summersault before ending up on his feet again.  I'd jump off occasionally as well but in a much less spontaneous way, standing at the edge, looking down, gauging how I should land, much like the kid on the cliff by the pond who takes so much time deciding if he should jump the other kids lose interest.  "So jump already!" I can hear Johnny saying.

It was also a place just to sit.  Sometimes I'd be up there, maybe with a piece of bread and peanut butter in my hand (How did I get that up there?) sitting on the wall with my feet dangling off onto the "wild" side, looking down at the grass or the garage roof, thinking about something, or not thinking about very much, passing the time on a summer's afternoon, vaguely hearing the shouts of the kids coming from the schoolyard, watching a large black dog run by on the ground below.

There was a similar wall running along the back of the schoolyard. I never walked along that one.  Not only was it higher and longer but on the other side was the yard of a scary old lady, Mrs. Poulio. (She could have been 40, or even 50, old to me.)  Adding to our concern was her dog, a little scrappy thing, very fast and snappy.

A lot of stick ball and squash were played in the school yard. Many of these balls and half balls would go flying over the wall into Mrs Poulio's garden. Sometimes a kid would climb over the wall and drop into her yard to retrieve them. I heard stories of that little dog fiercely attacking, of Mrs Poulio herself coming out with a large stick to threaten any invader.  (She is beginning to sound more and more like that Dutch Cleanser lady, the one with the stick chasing away the dirt.) 

I knew the dog was bad news. I'd seen him running around, his sharp little bark full of teeth and menace.  Running, snarling dogs scared me, and an old lady with a stick would have frightened me more.  Most of the stories of Mrs Poulio were related to me second hand by my older brother whom I had no reason to accuse of exaggeration or even falsehood. He was my older brother, trustworthy and wise. If he said these things about the "old lady over the wall" they must be true. I had better keep my distance.  Now I realize here was a childhood tale, an urban myth, something I believed because so many kids repeatedly embellished the same elaborated stories.

In truth, an older woman, widowed perhaps, who, like many that age, (Like me now, sometimes.) irritable, finding the constant noise of "those damn playground kids" disrupting her peace, reacted in an inappropriate manner by unleashing her territorial dog and threatening disruptive kids with barks and broom handles. 

She probably had a great collection of balls though.  

When it came time to touch the ground again from my pathway on the wall, I'd usually do a hanging jump than a full jump. I'd sit, twist to my hands, kick my legs off the wall, hold on to the top by  fingertips, dangle my legs down until I felt they were close to the ground, then let go.  This was only done on the school side of the wall. Not only was the drop too steep on the other side but you never knew about an errant dog or adult who had Mrs Poulio's disposition.

Most of the houses in my neighborhood were two or three or even four family structures, many with porches.  Sometimes when you wanted a kid to come out to play you'd stand outside his house and yell, "Hi Yo Johnny!" After a minute or so of shouting, faces would appear at windows and footsteps would sound on stairs as the friend roundup began.

As I got older I realized shouting a friend's name outside his house might be irritating to the people inside, or the neighbors.  Once, a kid's mother told me if I wanted to know if their son were home, "Come up the stairs and knock on the door." That's what I started to do.  First I'd open the common door that led inside and then climb a dark set of stairs to a hallway. The only stressful part was trying to remember which door was my friend's. They all looked the same.  

I liked going inside.  It would be suddenly quite dark as the outer door shut out the bright morning light. I'd be in a different world.   Walking along the hallway there'd be all sorts of interesting things to check out: stacks of newspapers, cardboard cartons, shoes lined up, bags of bottles, even some kid's toys.  Once before knocking on a friend's door, I played in the hallway for about 15 minutes with a metal truck that had a conveyor belt machine attached to it.  Each conveyor was a separate rubber pocket into which you put dirt (or sand if you were at the beach) and then hand crank it so that it emptied into the truck.  I had never seen anything like this and was fascinated.  I just sat there on the hallway floor, in the semidarkness, forgetting about my friend, just playing.  I have to admit I even considered taking it home with me explaining to my parents a friend let me have it. Well, it either it was too big to carry easily or my conscience bothered me. (Do seven year-olds have such ethics?)  I left it hoping it would still be there another day.

Most stairs were inside but to get to where one kid lived, I had to walk up an outside stairway.  It was likely a fire escape, made of untreated wood, and where it went exactly, a bedroom window, a kitchen door, I don't remember.  I do remember the feeling of going up that staircase, not being shut in by walls and heavy bannisters.  Here, as I climbed, I began to see over the trees and onto the roofs of houses.  This was amazing.  A whole different perspective.

The concept of private property was not one I was familiar with in a legal sense. I knew to knock and be given permission before entering someone's house, and that in schools and stores there were doors that led to places I wasn't allowed to be. Fences that hemmed in property on the outside I tended to ignore. After all, if a short cut required going over a fence or opening a gate, then that is what you had to do.  For a kid the shortest distance between two points was often through someone else's yard. 

This did present some problems.  Sometimes there would be no fence at the front of a house but a large fence at the back which meant you had either to turn around or try to climb over it or squeeze through it.  Getting through it or around it was often easier than climbing over it since many of these fences had seen better days.  Chain links were torn just enough to allow passage of a seven year-old's body, pickets were missing, fences sagged or twisted in a way so a kid could slip through, a nearby tree afforded a way up and then down.  If all that failed, you'd work the side yard which often had a different kind of fence, smaller or even more damaged than the back fence allowing a kid to keep moving, keep skirting the obstacles.  After a while I'd know which private property routes would be quickest with the least climbing or slipping past required. 

While I thought of these fences as barriers designed to keep me out, I also had to be aware of what they were designed to keep in.  There were times when dropping over a fence landed you in mud or garden manure or on top of an overturned wheel barrel.  Sometimes the owner of the house would be in the corner of the yard.  He'd either yell at you, "I told you to stay out of my yard!" ignore you, or even give a little wave of acknowledgment that he was a kid once too.

Owners were one thing; dogs were another.  Going around or through or over a fence meant a moment or two of reconnoitering before continuing, then moving fast to get to the street or the friend's house.  The unexpected was always a possibility.  A trip over a rake.  A slide in wet grass.  The worst, from out of nowhere, a dog coming at you, snarling and barking.  It happened to me a few times.  Once I just stopped, and the dog did too. I was close to the sidewalk; I walked backwards.  The dog sensed I was a minor irritant to his domain and let me go.  I discovered the bigger the dog the more the bark and the less the attack. Little dogs were different. They would come right at you.  I always managed to escape.  Trouble is every time I encountered a dog in someone's yard, I crossed that route off my safe shortcut list.  By the time I was eight I was using sidewalks more and yards less.  I may have had speed and agility but the local dogs put my skills to shame.

There were fences that were obvious obstacles and there were fences you didn't see coming.  I loved to run around, literally.  "Watch where you are going." was a phrase invented for me, and which I casually ignored. I seemed to have a sixth sense about avoiding holes in the ground, roots, debris in my path but I rarely saw the little metal trim fences that some people would have in their yards.  Often they were obscured by tall grass.  More than once I'd catch my foot in one and take a fall.   My agility was such that I'd often roll toward my right shoulder, tumble, and be back on my feet again.  Occasionally I'd have the wind knocked out and I'd have to lie on the ground. "Hey, get up," my friends would say. "You okay?"  I'd vow to be more careful but like most promises made by kids, they were quickly forgotten in the pursuit of fun.

Walls keep you in and keep you out, fences surround you, stairs get you up or let you go down, tunnels go under.  In my neighborhood I was kept out, sometimes surrounded, often went up and then down but rarely went under.  I always thought of the few local tunnels as covered alleys.  They struck me as short, dark passages that didn't seem to go anywhere in particular. 

The tunnels I was most familiar with were the ones associated with the elevated train I would ride into Boston with my mother and brother on the MTA, an elevated that transformed into a subway as it neared the city.  Those tunnels, entered swiftly and decisively, were dark and narrow with only the passing flash of a series of tunnel lights to indicate the train was still moving.  Going into Boston we never exited back out into the open since we'd get off at a station, Winter/Summer or Essex, somewhere in the middle of the tunnel network.  

Waiting for the train back to Egleston Square, I used to peer into the tunnel from the platform wondering what would happen if the train got stuck inside.  I knew from movies that bad things could happen in there. "Them", the movie about giant ants, comes to mind even though that was the Los Angeles water system. 

Occasionally a worker would emerge from the tunnel, always dressed in some worn stained clothes, and climb a set of stairs that led to the platform, stairs that I never realized were even there until one day I saw someone use them to get into the tunnel.  I felt a bit relieved thinking that if I were trapped in there at least there was a way to get back out again.

Coming back from Boston to Egleston was even more interesting than the trip in.  Sometimes I would stand in front on the lead car, right next to the driver's compartment, looking out the front into the dark tube of the tunnel. I felt like I were driving the train.

The dim lights would glint off the track as the train curled through the darkness, wheels squealing on the turns.  I could just barely make out a series of shallow cutouts on the sides of the tunnel, spots I was told where workers could go to get out of the way of a passing train.  Occasionally I'd see one of those workers, on the other side of the tracks, just for a second, then gone into the gloom as if he had disappeared.  Red lights would turn yellow as suddenly we were upon a station.  The train would stop, vibrate, the doors glide open, people in and out, and then once more into the darkness.

It wasn't long before the darkness would become boring; after all there is little to see.  I began to anticipate being outside again. Straining my eyes, far down the tracks, I'd see a small pinpoint of light, literally the light at the end of the tunnel.  I'd watch the glare get brighter and brighter until abruptly we were out, climbing a bit until the train was elevated again and I could see the roofs of the buildings going by. Dover Street was next. I wasn't far from home. One more fun thing, the crazy curve at Dudley where, watching from a side window in particular, it seemed like the train was going to lean too far and tumble into the street below. The lurching, the loud screeching of the wheels, looking straight down to people on the sidewalk, to a seven year-old it was almost as good as an amusement park ride. 

One of the local tunnels I could walk through was a way for cars to drive under an enormous granite railroad embankment some called a Hadrian's Wall in the way it divided and isolated one part of Jamaica Plain from another. This was the right of way of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.  The one-story embankment had been built to minimize dangerous street railroad crossings where, in a contest with a car, the train always won. With right of way no longer an issue, the trains were able to increase their speed as they travelled above.  

The part of this structure with which I was acquainted was down on Armory Street between School and Boylston Streets.  It wasn't a place my friends and I went a lot. It was right at the edge of one of my self-imposed limits, and an enormous wall certainly was a discouragement to go any further. While this impediment isolated me from whatever was on the other side, it also served to make my neighborhood special and unique. There was also a stairway at Boylston which led up to a station now gone. Even though my friends and I didn't pass all the way through the tunnel, we did climb the stairs to the top where there was a whole other world to explore.  More on that in another blog.

Perhaps if that Boylston Street tunnel had been brightly lit, clean, maybe even boasted a mural or two on the walls, I might have been inclined to walk through to see what was on the other side.  The tunnel, though, was dark, dim, grimy, altogether unpleasant.  The worst to us kids were the smells.  "It's like pee in here," Johnny would exclaim.  It was also damp, that clingy kind of dampness that even in summer was far from refreshing.  

The one thing that would occasionally lure us down to the tunnel was something we kids loved, echoes. We would run into the tunnel clomping down with our shoes as hard as we could to hear the reverberation all around us.  Once we were in the middle, the voice contests began.  Who could scream the loudest, who could make the funniest sound, or the scariest?  I always admired the friend who could whistle. I wasn't able to master it no matter how many times my friends would teach me.  Whistling in the tunnel was the best. The way the shrillness declined into a series of shorter and shorter toots. The way it combined, like a musical score, with the echoes of one of us who would scream or sing while the other whistled.  Then there were claps and smacks and any other noise we could make with our hands.  The fun was never over until a large truck came through.  We'd yell and clap and stomp as it drove by complementing it's multiple sets of echoes with ones of our own.  Sometimes the driver would beep his horn which resulted in such an echo we'd have to clasp our hands to our ears.  We'd take off toward the curve of light at the tunnel's entrance, the distortion of our laughing and shouting following us until we were back in the sunlight.

Another tunnel I would occasionally find myself in was a rear exit, maybe a fire exit, at the Egleston movie theatre.  This was a short pedestrian passageway, concrete clad if I recall correctly.  If I left the movies through the front door which led right to the street, the abrupt transition from the dim movie auditorium into the afternoon light always made me feel I had left a part of me back in the movie theatre. The passage from dark to light was just too sudden.  The dimmer movie tunnel gave me a few moments to acclimate before reality came flooding back.

The interior of the tunnel had a special quality to it, different from walking out the front doors to Washington Street. The sound was one aspect that made the tunnel passage unique.  Coming from a large auditorium with speaker-driven sound, I'd follow the other kids through the exit doors where the sounds would transition from the lo-fi distortions of the movie speakers to the muffled echoes of swarms of pent-up kids in the tunnel to the brighter crisper sounds of cars as we came out onto Beethoven Street.  

If I had been particularly engrossed in the movie, it would take me a while to come back to my real self as opposed to the self I had been imagining while watching the movie. Walking through the tunnel I'd slow down, trail behind my brother, to let my fuzzy mind and dimmed vision acclimate to the real world I was coming back to after an afternoon in the dark, flickering world of the movie theatre.

The fences and walls are still there, some the same, some new, keeping in dogs, keeping out kids, assuring privacy; kids are still whacking balls over them; sets of stairs still abound in the old neighborhood, down to cellars, up to roofs, for entrance and egress and escape; the old Egleston movie theatre is gone as are the tunnels under the railroad embankment, replaced by the MBTA Orange line.  I like to think though that our kid yells and claps still echo in some great infinite progression. 

The Ellis Mendell school remains as does the schoolyard.  The same brick wall surrounds it on several sides looking none the worse considering all the kids who have climbed it, run on top of it, jumped off it.  In that place where all the light goes, you can still find me on the wall as well, my feet off the ground, with youth and energy and balance to spare.